We’ve got to be more careful about how we title our movies, people. If we have to go to the box office and tell a total stranger “I Want Your Sex, please,” don’t act surprised when the ticket sales take a hit!

I Want Your Sex is the second Olivia Wilde sex comedy currently in theaters. And they’re both totally different, to the benefit of both movies. One was an examination of ethical non-monogamy, directed by Wilde herself. The other is produced/co-written/directed by the notorious shock filmmaker Greg Araki, in which Wilde plays an outrageously unethical boss who engages her employee (played by Cooper Hoffman) in an ongoing sexual BDSM affair. One was built to be an intimate character drama with grounded and three-dimensional characters, while the other is absurdly heightened.

So, the premise is funnier, the cast doesn’t have Seth Rogen dragging it down, and we actually get onscreen sex and nudity in the bargain. So far, so much better.

Wilde plays Erika Tracy, a notorious and eccentric provocateur in modern art, with a particular reputation for sexually charged works of abstract multimedia. And somehow, she’s successful and wealthy enough to afford her own studio, complete with a platoon of underpaid interns (led by Vikktor, her majordomo, played by Daveed Diggs) at her beck and call.

Our protagonist is Elliot (Hoffman), a recent UCLA grad with a girlfriend (Minerva, played by Charlie XCX, of all people) who plainly hates his guts. To wit: Instead of living together, Elliot shares an apartment with his longtime best friend (Apple, played by Chase Sui Wonders). After however much time unable to pay his share of the rent, Elliot lands a job (a little too easily, I might add) as one of Erika’s interns.

That’s where the plot begins, but it’s not where the film begins. The film literally opens with Erika naked and unconscious, face-down in her pool, while Elliott’s face is smeared with blood and lipstick and he’s wearing nothing but lacy pink lingerie. The movie — told in flashback — is about how the almighty fuck we get to that point.

See, Elliot is of the generation that grew up hyperaware of “cancel culture”, in which most personal interaction happens online. So the poor naive idiot is clueless in matters of intimacy and how to form a stable, healthy relationship. This in turn means that as soon as any halfway-attractive woman gives him any kind of attention, his backbone completely evaporates.

In summary, he’s the perfect mark for someone like Erika, a straight-up narcissist who runs through the predatory relationship playbook to a T. She leverages her power as his employer. She steadily destroys everything else in Elliot’s life. She isolates him by destroying every other relationship and friendship he has. She leads him along with an expert balance of insults and compliments. She has no regard for personal boundaries, going so far as to domme without a safe word. (!!!)

At some point, it’s hard to tell if Erika has any kind of endgame. Is this for her art? Is Erika venting her personal stress? As the film unfolds, we come to learn that it’s all of that and none of it. The bottom line is that Erika isn’t just a sadist and a sociopath, she’s an outright hedonist. She’s pathologically incapable of thinking beyond whatever she wants in the moment. And it doesn’t matter if she’s a liar and an idiot and she’s only out for herself — she genuinely believes that everyone else is too.

And Elliot? Mostly, he’s grateful to make any kind of sexual connection. Especially if he’s stuck in a “sub” position, which obviates any kind of guesswork or effort on his part. And again, Elliot is a spineless naive twerp whom Erika is perfectly capable of manipulating.

Getting back to the comparison with The Invite, that movie was more interested in the emotional/mental aspect of sex. This one is all about the physical. This is all about the carnal and chemical urge for any kind of sexual release in defiance of all common sense and self-preservation. Though I might add that the film also has a lot to say about the nature and purpose of art, how true or “real” art is, the interplay between art and commerce, the interplay between artist and audience, and so on and so forth.

Here’s the problem: It’s all buried under so much noise.

The film is only 90 minutes long, and most of that is taken up by the various sexual misadventures of Elliot and Erika. This movie is heightened to such an outrageous degree, we’ve got Mason Gooding on deck as the token BIPOC gay friend. The police detectives are played by goddamn Margaret Cho and Johnny Fucking Knoxville!

There’s so much going on here that it’s too easy for details to get lost in the scrum. For instance, Apple is introduced in such a way as to make it clear that she’s gay, until later scenes throw that into question and we never get a clear answer regarding her sexuality. Which is kind of a crucial point in a movie that’s all about sexual discovery.

Getting back to the various themes at play, there’s a major problem: They’re primarily explored by way of Erika. The film is trying to examine bodily autonomy, the business of art, and all these other complicated topics that demand painstaking nuance. And I can’t sort through all that, because I’m too busy trying to figure out what Erika’s deal is and how full of shit she is!

Naturally, all this chaos means the film spectacularly fails to hit the landing. I’m obviously loathe to discuss the ending in any detail, but it seriously reads like the filmmakers simply ran out of time with no idea how to wrap all this up. So they threw together whatever random nonsense they could think of and called it good.

I Want Your Sex is a strange one. It’s certainly not a boring movie. It’s short and fast-paced and provocative enough to stay entertaining. The problem I keep running into here is that the characters and themes are underdeveloped because Araki won’t get out of his own damn way. Yes, the sex scenes and the mental/emotional torture are all provocative, but there’s too much shock value as an end in itself and not enough about what the shock value actually means.

The best I can say for this movie is that it’s got me interested in Araki’s other works. I’m genuinely curious to see how this movie stacks up in comparison to the greater filmography. And I will say that while The Invite was more informative, I Want Your Sex is undeniably more entertaining.